"The game's stage was a construction site, so we made him into basically a carpenter," creator Shigeru Miyamoto, who is also responsible for Donkey Kong and Zelda, said in a 2011 interview.

"[In Super Mario Bros] we brought in Luigi and a lot of the game was played underground so we made him to fit that setting and, we decided he could be a plumber."

"The scenario dictates his role."

'Mario has always been representative of everyone'

While other high-profile games like Sega's Sonic the Hedgehog and PlayStation's Crash Bandicoot struggled to transition through generations, Mario has continued to evolve with the times.

Mario has held a range of occupations including a doctor, archaeologist, Olympic athlete and painter.

Mr Miyamoto told National Public Radio in the US in 2015 that his vision of Mario "has always been that he's sort of representative of everyone".

"He's kind of a blue-collar hero. And so that's why we chose those roles for him that were things like carpenters and plumbers," he said.

But with freelancers now making up 35 per cent of the US workforce and with more than a million independent contractors in Australia, it should come as no surprise that Mario has decided to embrace the gig economy.

"In this gig based economy, of course he isn't [a plumber anymore]. He drives for Uber now," joked Paris Lay on twitter.